Walking Dead

CHAPTER 17

I had a problem with the Horned God of the Hunt: I quite simply couldn’t take my eyes off him. I’d never been able to, not from the first moment he’d roared into my life, a living thing of liquid silver and burning green. Nothing had changed since then, not his anger, not his strength, not his beauty, and not my ability to be anything other than stunned by him, either.

He came at me like a flash flood, hugged close to his mercury-hued horse. They were larger than life, the pair of them, magical creatures poured from molds that humanity only dreamed of. Nearly all I could see of the god was his wildfire green eyes, blazing with intent that was wholly focused on me. Everything else about him was a blur, written in by my memory: the starlight-spattered brown hair, the terrible sharp widow’s peak it fell back from and the distorted bone at his temples that would give birth to the magnificent antlers he was named for. His body was slender now, not yet changed to bear the weight of a too-heavy head, and his clothes were living silver, flowing and caressing. I’d seen otherworldly beauty time and again in the past year as I’d raced through one madcap adventure after another, but nothing held a candle to the Horned God. Like an idiot, I found myself smiling at his approach.

Cernunnos slammed by at top speed, twitching at the last second to knee me in the jaw.

From the outside it must’ve been fantastic to watch. I felt my whole body stretch out in slow motion, head thrown back with the impact. My hands flew up like a backstroker off the block, and for an instant my body traced a perfect arch in the air.

Then, as it was wont to do, gravity called me home with a vengeance.

I just barely broke my fall with my hands, and more or less crumpled down on myself like an accordion. Astonishment kept me in a lump on the ground; astonishment, and the distant idea that the moment I moved I was going to start hurting an awful lot. I was pretty sure I should be hurting already, but surprise held it at bay. Cernunnos and I had parted on good terms, if you called him kissing me until my knees went wobbly good terms. I certainly had. Maybe gods judged these things differently.

Hooves smashed around me and I coiled up with my hands over my head, yelling wordlessly. Yeah, that hurt: pain exploded through my skull in piercing shards. In fact, I thought it was likely my skull was indeed made up of piercing shards, and that all the king’s doctors and all the king’s men weren’t going to put Jo back together again. Oh, God. That was worse than the banshee. It had been going to rhyme me to death. Now I was going to rhyme myself to death. That was so unfair.

Worse, I was clearly about a million mental miles away from the calm that might help me heal myself. I stopped yelling and just groaned, then gave that up as a bad job, too, and went right for pathetic whimpering. I hoped I’d at least chipped the bastard’s kneecap with my thick head, but I was reasonably certain I’d gotten the raw end of the deal.

The hoof beats had faded into the distance. The tiny part of me that wasn’t busy being impressed with how my brain ricocheted around inside its casing informed me that they were now returning, and that I might want to do something about it. In a supreme effort of will, I rolled over in time to watch Cernunnos’s stallion skid to a stop above me. It reared up, front feet pawing, and it was clear that for the second time in my life, the majestic beast had every intention of killing me.

It was probably a dumb-ass time to leave my body behind, but that’s what I did.

My garden was mind-blowingly peaceful after the cacophony of the Hunt. My head didn’t hurt any less, but the silence felt like a pillow around my bruises. It took a few seconds to pull myself together and tentatively probe my face. Astonishingly, there was nothing broken, just a point of swollen flesh that I bet would bleed like a stuck pig if I poked a pin in it. It was just as well I didn’t have a pin. My brain thought gallons of blood squirting out of my jaw sounded kind of cool.

I wrested my mind away from that image and searched for one that would help me fix my head. What leaped to mind were bubbles in the paint job, but I was hardly going to sand the bruise off my head and paint over it. My car metaphor didn’t always work smoothly. Draining the oil would have to do, though that led back to the squirting. I gritted my teeth and imagined working a clog out of the oil filter so it could flow smoothly through the engine again. I didn’t want blood clotting up my head. It needed to move away from the injury, get back into the rest of my system. Then I could do a touchup on the paint job, bruise and swollen flesh smoothing away.

With the ache in my skull considerably reduced, I took the shielding I’d so poorly protected my garden with, and brought it back with me to the real world.

The stallion’s hooves smashed down on shimmering silver-blue magic, clanging like steel on steel. I watched reverberations shoot up the poor animal’s legs—how it had gone from trying to kill me to poor animal, I didn’t know—and gave a relieved meep at not being crushed to death. The horse slipped off my shields to the ground and pranced uncomfortably. Cernunnos, about a thousand feet above me, bared his teeth and drew blade.

This was all starting to seem strangely familiar.

Sadly for me, last time I’d had a steel butterfly knife in hand, and all I had right now was a whole bunch of diddly and a big lump of squat. More, this time I had a passionate amount of really truly swear-to-God cross-my-heart hope-to-die not wanting to impale myself again. Or be impaled, for that matter, but there was a short sharp sword on its way down to do just that. I closed my eyes, put my hand out and hoped like hell that I was right about being able to pull a rapier through inconveniently intervening space when I needed it.

It was even money on who was more surprised, me or Cernunnos, when I did. The god’s jaw dropped open in as human an expression as I’d ever seen on anything, and my face split with a relieved, foolish grin. The sword was there, as solidly, as reliably, as it had been in the astral plane. Moreover, my armor came with it: a copper bracelet on my wrist, silver necklace settling in the hollow of my throat and a small round shield decorating my arm. Those four items together spun a circle of brilliance around me, and their connection to one another quartered the circle with me in its center. The psychic shields I could build had nothing on what gifts of love and spoils of war offered. I knew I wasn’t invincible, but in that armor, carrying that sword, I thought I might be the best me possible.

That other Joanne, the one who called herself Siobhán, could never have had all of these things because she’d never met Gary, not the way I knew him, and she never would have fought Cernunnos the way I did the first time I faced him.

Something very like joy surged through me, and I slammed my rapier into the god’s sword, knocking it aside. Then, because I was an idiot and suddenly full of piss and vinegar, I scrambled to my feet. I didn’t know what the hell his problem was, but he’d started it. That was fine. I’d finish it. I did the classic “c’mon, buster” hand thing, with my palm turned toward myself and my fingers crooking in invitation.

And the master of the Hunt, who wasn’t any brighter than I was, drove his heels into the silver stallion’s sides, accepting the challenge. The animal leaped at me with an outraged scream. I shrieked and flung myself to the side as Cernunnos’s sword went whistling over my head. Next time I pick a fight with a god, remind me to make sure he gets off his horse first.

Cernunnos wheeled the stallion and charged at me again. There was no possible way I was anything other than totally screwed, but this time I did my best to stand my ground, letting his blow smash into my shield and send me spinning. On the full circle I lashed out at the stallion’s flanks, feeling that it wasn’t quite fair to pick on the horse, but that it was distinctly less fair to get trampled. Ol’ Silver clearly wasn’t accustomed to taking hits for the home team, because he bucked with a violence that surprised even Cernunnos. There was no chance the Horned God would come unseated, but it took long seconds for him to get the stallion back under control.

In the meantime, the child who led the Hunt, the pale boy Rider who was Cernunnos’s only immortal son, who bound the god to a mortal cycle of life and death, and whose life I’d saved once upon a time, tapped me on the shoulder and offered me the reins to his own golden mare.

I said, “Oh hell yeah,” and swung up on the gorgeous beast like I knew what I was doing. The young Rider stepped back with a smile on his face, the same feral thing his father could wear, then fell back farther still, to stand side by side with his niece. Suzanne’s screams had long since fallen silent, and now she had both hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide and green with either astonishment or fear.

Behind her—behind them both—stood the Hunt, waiting restlessly for their master to finish his business. Men, each and every one, from the thick-shouldered bearded king whose name I knew and would never dare speak, to the slim blond archer whose longbow had driven arrows through Petite’s sturdy steel body. I wondered if there were no women because women committed fewer crimes that would condemn them to an eternal ride, or if they were simply better at not getting caught.

The boy Rider flicked an eyebrow, and I stopped wondering about the sociological makeup of a mythical host of riders in order to face its leader in single combat. “Mano a mano,” I said aloud, remembering.

Eager rage contorted Cernunnos’s features, and we came together like goddamn Titans clashing. I saw silver peel off the edge of my rapier, a sizzling thread that fell to the ground and was smashed beneath dancing hooves. My arm wobbled with the hit, and for some reason I laughed, utterly thrilled with pitting myself against a god. I wheeled my mare around with nothing more than a lean and charged Cernunnos again, standing in the stirrups to add to my already considerable advantage in reach. He was my height, maybe even a little better than, but the sword he carried was much shorter than the rapier, and I sucked in my gut to make his passing slash a miss. He rode by, and for the first time I could remember, I twisted and shot a bolt of deep blue magic from my fingertips.

It surged out of me like a tidal wave, more draining than fighting Matilda had been. I learned two things right then: one, using my power as a weapon would probably kill me, and two, even when I was thinking in terms of weaponry, the magic itself was hard to corrupt. Light crashed into Cernunnos, knocking him from his horse, but he didn’t get up again. I brought the mare around and slid from her back, sword at a god’s throat.

“Do you yield?” Power danced over my skin, blue and silver threads weaving to make a net. I could drag him all over the world if I needed to, but there was a hell of a lot of appeal in just sitting on his chest and pinning his arms down with my knees, if he seemed inclined to continue fighting.

Green fire spat through his eyes. “You’ve changed since we last met, little shaman.”

My mouth said, “So have you,” and my mind only caught up with that a few seconds later. Surprise washed through my magic, loosening it a little, and I stepped back a few inches. “You have changed, my lord master of the Hunt. Your horns are gone.”

Not just gone. He’d said they grew with his power, erupting fully on the last day before he returned to Tir na nOg, the world from which he came. I expected them to be nothing more than subtle patterns against his temple now, so early in his ride. But nothing at all graced his forehead, no distortion or stretching of bone and skin. I crouched and slid my fingertips against his temple, taking victory as an excuse for intimacy, and found no rough malformation through touch, either. “Cernunnos, what happened to you? You’re all wrong.” Magic stirred under my skin, searching for a way to put a wild thing back together.

“We were called too early from our place beyond the stars, little shaman. This is why I came in such anger, and took you as my enemy.” His wildfire gaze went to Suzanne and came back to me. “You can be a fool, Sio—”

I put my fingers over his lips. “You can call me Joanne.”

Silence went on far longer than was strictly warranted. I removed my fingers, and the silence kept going, very loudly. Eventually the Horned God said, “You are a fool. Joanne Walk—”

“—er.”

Another one of those silences happened. “C’mon,” I said. “I don’t go bandying your true name about. Leave mine in peace.”

Green fire flashed again. “You do not know my true name.”

“Totally beside the point. You’re a fool, Joanne Walker. What comes next?”

The third time he drew out the silence I began to think he’d never break it again. I’d have given a great deal to know what was going on behind his brilliant gaze, but I couldn’t read it any more than I could read a rock.

Actually, okay, truthfully, I could probably read quite a bit from a rock, if I turned the Sight on it. But looking at Suzy had damn near burned my eyes out, and I wasn’t in a hurry to see Cernunnos in any more primal a visage than the one he presented by choice. “You’re a fool, gwyld, but had we come through at our rightful hour, I wouldn’t take you for one great enough to threaten a child of my blood. My weakness is to your benefit. Had I been at full strength…”

Gwyld. I hadn’t heard that word in a while. Not since the last time I’d encountered the likes of a death god, in fact. It meant wise man or shaman in Irish, and therefore technically applied to me, though I wasn’t very wise. “If you’d been at full strength you wouldn’t have tried riding me down, and I wouldn’t have been able to kick your ass nearly that easily.” I stood up and offered Cernunnos a hand. To my eternal astonishment, he looked at it, then accepted it and let me pull him to his feet.

I’d mostly only touched him when we were trying to kill each other. He was tall and hit like a load of bricks, so I didn’t expect his body weight to be negligible. I gave him a quick surprised nod, but he knotted his hand around mine and stepped in very close, gaze hot on mine. “I trust you would not have ‘kicked my ass’ at all, Siobhán Walkingstick.”

I swallowed, trying to remember why it was I usually thought breathing was important. He smelled of the forest in autumn, rich and crackling and clean, and I thought he would taste of cold fresh water from the stream. A smile curved his mouth and he let me go, though his eyes on mine kept me as arrested as his hands might’ve. I was okay with that. I could happily drown in his blazing gaze. I even felt a stupid little smile start working its way into place.

A light of satisfaction flashed in Cernunnos’s eyes. “Granddaughter,” he said then, and released me by looking toward Suzanne. My breath left me in a rush and I squeaked, reaching for the mare to lean against. She ignored me, ambling toward the boy Rider and Suzanne, then stood with her head between their shoulders, snuffling for treats. I was abandoned all around.

“Granddaughter,” Cernunnos said again. “Why have you called me before my time?”

“And how,” the boy Rider said dryly, but hushed himself when the god’s glare fell on him.

Suzy ducked her head so hair curtained her face. I wanted to step forward and pull it back so I could see the three of them together, the two part-mortal descendants of the god, rude copies of his narrow elegance, and yet both fragile by human terms. She whispered, “I was scared,” and looked up apologetically.

“Frightened enough to tear down walls between the worlds?” Cernunnos did what I wanted to, brushing her hair back with a light touch. His hair was ash with starlight, and hers wheat-pale, but they were of a kind. My heart twisted to see them together, a strange family torn apart by worlds and time. “What could unnerve the child of a god so badly?”

“That.” Suzanne pointed beyond him, beyond me, to the thing I’d forgotten about. I turned, dismayed, to find Matilda Whitehead far less a thing of death, and much more a simulacrum of a living girl.

She might have been pretty, if her idea of herself was true. Not happy, but then, I wouldn’t be happy if I was a hundred-plus years dead, either. She had a solemn face with large eyes, and dark hair tied in a neat braid and decorated with a fat, colorless bow. She was still far too thin, but no longer cadaverous; another few bursts of magic on my part, and she might work her way up to healthy, though she’d never be plump.

Cernunnos let go a breath cold enough to chill the air, and turned to me with a look of both disgust and cunning. “This is a thing that isn’t meant to be, little shaman, and it’s born of you and your magic.”

“I know.” Non-existent bugs crawled over my skin and I shuddered, trying to wipe them away. “I was trying to get rid of it when Suzy called for you.”

“Its name is Matilda,” the thought-formed ghost said in a thin voice. She watched me like I was her next and maybe only meal. Hairs stood up on my arms and I told myself-again—that there was no such thing as vampires. “I only want to live. You can give me life.”

“You’ve been dead a hundred years. I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry.” I wasn’t, very, but some bizarre form of deep-seated societal training made me say it.

“All I need is a little more of your power.” She took a weak step toward me, thin body straining with effort. “Please?”

I considered it for about a nanosecond, then shot a look at Cernunnos. He was a god of death. He should know something about this sort of situation. “What happens if I do what she asks?”

To my surprise, he turned a palm up and offered an answer with the gesture. “You feed a wrongness in the worlds. Make no mistake, little gwyld, you and she cannot both survive. Give her what she requires, and you wipe away the years granted to you.”

“Right.” My voice shot up and broke on the single word. “How do I get rid of it? I can’t fight it with magic.”

“Ah.” Fine lines appeared around the corners of his eyes, evidence of a wicked smile that barely touched his mouth. “Perhaps I can help you.”

On a scale of one to ten, that was up there around vampires in its reassurance factor. My heart tried making a break for it, then, stymied by my ribs, decided squeezing down into an invisible knot would do the trick. I thumped a fist against my breastbone and coughed out a pathetic little burp before getting enough voice together to ask, “At what cost?”

“A bargain,” Cernunnos offered. “You’ve done so well with those in the past. You cannot fight this creature, not here, not anywhere, but I can. Ride with me, Joanne Walker. Ride with the Hunt a third and final time, and I will take you so far from this place that your magic will stretch and thin, and leave nothing for your undead child to live on.”

“And what do you get out of this?”

“You’ll bear my mark.” His eyes were brilliant, compelling green, and his smile full of delight. “You will become a part of the Hunt, and when your final day comes, you will choose to ride with me through eternity.”

“I thought…” I wet my lips and tried again. “I thought I already did. Bear your mark.”

“Marked for me is not the same as bearing my mark. Many mortal souls are marked for me, and I carry those souls beyond this world and into the next. Make no mistake, I shall come for thee and I shall have thee in such a way at the end of thy days, but this thing I offer now, Siobhán Walkingstick, is a thing all of its own.”

I closed my eyes and murmured, “You’re talking in my head again, aren’t you? Thank you.” He was a god. I probably couldn’t stop him from flinging my name around if he wanted, but the echoing depth of his voice suggested he’d changed from spoken speech to silent. It was a gift, and I was inclined to consider it in his offer. I opened my eyes to look at him again, repeating his words in my mind. “‘I’ll choose to ride with you through eternity.’ You mean I’d have a choice. Even if I ride with you now, when I die I’ll have a choice. I could just go through the Dead Zone and on to whatever happens next. Reincarnation, if that’s what’s on the plate.”

“You’ll make the choice now, in exchange for this monster’s destruction.” Smooth voice, soft voice, speaking perfect reason. I put my face in my hands, then looked up over my fingertips.

“I can’t. I can’t make the choice now. I could lie to you, but I won’t do that. I don’t know who I’m going to be when that day comes around, my lord master of the Hunt. I might need to come back around to this world more than I need to keep my promise to you. So I can’t make the promise. I don’t know how I’m going to get rid of this Matilda-thing, but I’m not going to lie to you to do it.”

“Wise little gwyld.” Cernunnos lifted a hand to trace the scar on my cheek. “But think on thy words, Joanne Walker. Dost thou know for certain that I mean the end of this mortal existence as thy final day? I would have all of you that I could, and yet even I cannot stand against the makers of the worlds.”

I stared at him, heart sick and small in my chest. “What do I miss out on? If I say yes, am I walking away from…from Heaven? From some kind of end-days party that everybody else is going to be at? Do I miss out on eternity with…” Morrison, was how that sentence finished, but I just let it fade away.

To my surprise, amusement quirked the corner of Cernunnos’s mouth. “I am neither born of your world nor of your flesh, little shaman. I have no answer for you.” He inclined his head, eyes lidding to hide some of the fire in his gaze. “Choose.”

I looked back at Matilda. At Suzanne and the boy Rider, and the Hunt and the world around and beyond them. The Sight washed over my vision, turning the world to a quiet haze of waiting, as though I’d stepped a little out of time. Matilda was a black streak in that, a wrongness, as Cernunnos had said; the boy Rider was more brilliant even than Suzanne.

And the god, the god himself, I finally dared turn my Sight on, and found him blazing with restraint and quiescence. There were no easy words for his colors; they were raw and hard edged, mixing and spilling together and over and under, raw chaos and primal life clinging to a slender alien form.

I put my hand in his, and joined the Hunt.